Transient convective instabilities in directional solidification

Abstract

We study the convective instability of the melt during the initial transient in a directional solidification experiment in a vertical configuration. We obtain analytically the dispersion relation, and perform an additional asymptotic expansion for large Rayleigh number that permits a simpler analytical analysis and a better numerical behavior. We find a transient instability, i.e. a regime in which the system destabilizes during the transient whereas the final unperturbed steady state is stable. This could be relevant to growth mode predictions in solidification.